Curse of the Reborn
by Arthas972
Summary: Bane has been a Reborn for just over seven years now.  After leaving the group Bane searches fervently for answers to his own identity alongside his friends Raine and Shade.  Written with Srgeman's permission


This is my very first Reborn fanfic, based on the character Bane from Srgeman's A Little Night Music. The story is set immediately after Bane left the group at the end of A Little Night Music, several hours after he lost his leg.

**Prologue: A Hard Life**

My name is Timothy McVeigh – no relation to the infamous bomber – and I'm dead. Well, I was dead, anyway, for reasons I still don't fully understand and it's been nine years. Has it really been that long? It feels like that was only yesterday, I remember the event so vividly.

I am what is known as a Reborn. Reborns are beings that died before their time came and were granted a second chance by either Arceus, Mew, or Giratina – Giratina in my case. You'd be surprised how many of us there are out there, most of us just trying to live normal lives in spite of our own pasts.

I don't like talking about my past but this is a story that needs to be told, so others don't make the mistakes I did. I witnessed so many people die. Death is something I am familiar with...and it terrifies me no less fiercely now than it did the day I died. I was invisible as a human, a nobody; I was an image people saw only for the value of my skills not for me as a person. My parents forced me to travel around Sinnoh, making money to feed their greed. It broke my heart that they didn't care about me, but I never spoke out against it.

Why, you ask? Because I didn't care what others thought or that I was being used; I was doing what I loved, a passion that drove me onward through the hard times. Call me weird, but I loved to dance; it was one of the few things that brought me true happiness in my messed-up life.

Then, all that changed one night after a long performance. My parents were in particularly foul moods that night; I don't know with certainty but I think my father had been drinking during the show. I never knew him to be an alcoholic – though the thought did cross my mind once or twice – but his behavior that evening was erratic even for him. Mom and Dad got in a fight. They always fought, it was nothing new to me, but this time things didn't end well: my father, engaged fully in the argument, wasn't paying attention to the road. I, however, was. I tried to warn them, I really did, but they didn't realize it until it was too late. The last thing I remember was the car hitting the tree before I blacked out. We were going at least 60, probably faster.

Sometimes I wish I had died in that crash, but fate isn't known for its kindness. I survived and woke up hours later in a hospital bed. Both my parents lived with minor damage, unfortunately, but of course they acted like it was the end of the world...and blamed it all on me. That could've been the end of it; I'd get grounded for probably a year while they simmered, then it would have been back to the old 'family routine.'

But like I said, life sucks, it really does. It wasn't my injuries from the crash that killed me that night; my death was painful but quick. When I tried to sit up in the bed I realized I couldn't feel my legs...or move them. At all. I had survived the crash but had been paralyzed from the waist down. My parents left the room discussing what they would do now that I couldn't dance. I never saw my mother again after that and it would be over eight years before I met my father again. The doctor came in and told me they couldn't find my parents anywhere, which led me to automatically believe they had abandoned me. I don't know what happened, only that I flatlined after going into a stress-induced seizure.

According to what I've been told I was dead for roughly a year before I was reborn, though it felt – and still does – like only a few minutes passed. Funny thing is I was reborn on my human birthday – Legendaries aren't always evil bastards, though according to Angel hers made it a profession to piss her off.

I hatched to a young female Lucario in a village with very anti-human beliefs. My life was relatively uneventful until someone figured out I was a Reborn; which, needless to say, didn't end well. Rather than resist I left without a fight, intending to return only when I was strong enough to stand up to them.

A year passed before I set foot in that forest again, fully confident in my abilities. Now a Lucario, I was far stronger than I ever was as a Riolu, but my real reasons for returning had nothing to do with that. In truth I was running. Running from a cold and unforgiving reality I refused to accept, to the only place I could go: home, even if they hated me there.


End file.
